Peter Fleming - "Operation Sea Lion"

Since a couple of folks have asked, I thought I'd share what I plumped for as weekend listening while I was supposed to be taking it easy. As it turned out, I didn't actually get much listening done - they were pretty keen to get me out of the room on the day, and I spent half of the Sunday asleep...

But, I did cash in a free Audible.co.uk subscription for a copy of Peter Fleming's 1957 book "Operation Sea Lion". Fleming was Bond author Ian's brother, and the book dates back to a time sufficiently soon after the war that he could draw on a lot more eye-witness accounts than more recent books.

The audio book is 12 hours long, so it's currently keeping me company in 15 minute chunks on my commute... [counts on fingers: so that'll last me about 3 more weeks]. It's read by the amazingly prolific Gordon Griffin, who's done well over 600 audio books, and who has, to be fair, the perfect delivery to do Fleming's delightfully British prose justice, as well as slipping into a quite subtle German accent where necessary. I have to admit, I'm really enjoying it - Fleming isn't a journalist per se, so you won't find this having the tone of something by, say, Max Hastings. He's very much a crafter of words, with some delightful turns of phrase and astute observations.

To be honest? It's a better book to listen to than it would be to read, I think. I'll review it properly when I'm done.